Why the Hell Does David Brooks Still Have a Job?

The New York Times columnist’s latest on Trump and Russia is a real piece of work. Drew Magary breaks it down.

As a professional Haver Of Takes, I have a certain morbid admiration for New York Times columnist and human mayonnaise spill David Brooks. I don’t quite know what the secret is to attaining such lofty standing in the Bogus Influencer Economy that you get to spend the bulk of your time appearing on the Sunday morning shows, collecting hefty advances for pamphlet-quality books, racking up monstrous fees on the lecture circuit, and drawing a hefty salary from the Times for columns that don’t even get formally edited. All I know is that I want in. I want the keys to the Fartsniffer Club, where con artists like Brooks and Tom Friedman and George Will and Arianna Huffington and the like can all gather together to address The State Of Things and feast on live human infants.

But until that lovely day when I am granted access to Fraud Shangri-La, I am left perpetually and utterly baffled as to how Brooks is allowed to pump out columns as execrable as the one he posted on Russiagate (or as I prefer to call the scandal: Urineburg) today. Please note that Brooks was already on a remarkable take bender this week when he posted this missive about deadbeat dads (some of them care, you guys!). But that wasn’t nearly enough. Now, he had to double down and offer additional proof that his superiors (maybe he doesn’t have any?) definitely don’t read any of the horrible he shit he puts in print. How else to explain this pile of shit?

I was the op-ed editor at The Wall Street Journal at the peak of the
Whitewater scandal. We ran a series of investigative pieces “raising
serious questions” (as we say in the scandal business) about the
nefarious things the Clintons were thought to have done back in
Arkansas.

Now I confess I couldn’t follow all the actual allegations made in
those essays. They were six jungles deep in the weeds. But I do
remember the intense atmosphere that the scandal created. A series of
bombshell revelations came out in the media, which seemed monumental
at the time. A special prosecutor was appointed and indictments were
expected. Speculation became the national sport.

In retrospect Whitewater seems overblown. And yet it has to be
confessed that, at least so far, the Whitewater scandal was far more
substantive than the Russia-collusion scandal now gripping Washington.

I am a truly lazy man. I’m known to openly groan if I sit down only to realize the remote control is out of reach. But even I can’t match the sheer, unbridled, galling laziness of Brooks here, who was apparently too busy to learn the intricacies of a bone-dry real estate investigation his own paper conducted, but has no problem at all declaring that scandal more damning than the current Russia clusterfuck.

Keep in mind that Donald Trump already has proven financial ties to Russia, and openly ASKED Russia to hack the DNC, and let Russian state photographers into the Oval Office, and fired the man investigating him, and openly mused about firing the other guy investigating him, and eased sanctions on Russia almost immediately after taking office. He didn’t even to try hide any of this shit. Oh, and his son-in-law asked to set up a formal backchannel with the Russians to circumvent diplomatic protocol. And yet here’s Brooks being like, “Nah, that Whitewater thing I never bothered to learn about was worse.” I’m in awe of this man’s hustle.

There may be a giant revelation still to come.

YEAH THAT’S WHY THERE’S AN ENORMOUS FAR-RANGING INVESTIGATION GOING ON AS WE SPEAK YOU COMPLETE DUNCE. “Given that an army of prosecutorial masters have been assigned to look into collusion, obstruction, money laundering, and hooker piss orgies, perhaps there’s a touch of fire to this smoke, but one can never know!”

But as the Trump-Russia story has evolved, it is striking how little
evidence there is that any underlying crime occurred — that there was
any actual collusion between the Donald Trump campaign and the
Russians.

There were some meetings between Trump officials and some Russians,
but so far no more than you’d expect from a campaign that was publicly
and proudly pro-Putin.

Yep, just your run-of-the-mill pro-dictatorship campaign. Completely ordinary and within the confines of pro-dictatorship campaigning. The meetings probably included pastries of some sort.

Now of course Trump shouldn’t have tweeted about Oval Office tape
recordings. Of course he shouldn’t have fired James Comey.

[Chorus of angels descends from the sky carrying a giant banner that says “BUT!”]

But even if you took a paragon of modern presidents—a contemporary
Abraham Lincoln—and you directed a democratically unsupervised,
infinitely financed team of prosecutors at him and gave them power to
subpoena his staff and look under any related or unrelated rock in an
attempt to bring him down, there’s a pretty good chance you could spur
even this modern paragon to want to fight back.

You could spur even him to do something that had the whiff of
obstruction.

WHERE THE FUCK AM I? How the fuck does this run in print? How does this random IDIOT get treated as the definitive word on Serious Matters when’s out here acting like (A) Robert Mueller wasn’t appointed by democratically elected officials, (B) This kind of sweeping inquiry could befall literally any president, and (C) Lincoln would be King Of All Paper Shredders if he got investigated? And he’s the one saying something lacks substance? Fire this man.

There’s just something worrisome…

You know what? Fuck your worrisome. You’ll pardon me if I find the fact that Donald Trump is in charge far more worrisome than whether or not his detractors rightfully assume he’s into some bad shit. Brooks has the whole Tasteful Objection verbiage down. Things are worrisome, or troubling, or raise serious questions, or give him pause. Meanwhile, the world is FUCKED! Freaking out is a completely normal and logical response to Donald Trump being President and Trump’s behavior in office. What is NOT logical is being the contrarian millionaire who steps back and folds his arms and points at the fire alarm and declares, “Now THAT might be the real problem here.”

…every time we find ourselves replacing politics of democracy with the
politics of scandal.

Are you new here? Have you met America? We have always scandalized politics in America. Frankly, that’s what helps keep politicians in line. They deserve to be screamed at on a daily basis. That’s freedom, baby. But Brooks is out here like, “Oh, what will become of our SOULS if we indulge in such odious conjecture?” Kiss my ass.

In democracy, the issues count, and you try to win by persuasion.

The sitting president’s campaign may have deliberately helped Russia interfere in the electoral process. That’s an issue! That’s why we have Mueller there to see if there’s persuasive evidence of it.

You recognize that your opponents are legitimate, that they will
always be there and that some form of compromise is inevitable.

Nope. No. Don’t think so. “Maybe instead of focusing on the investigation, you sit down and hug it out with the deranged pussygrabber?”

The politics of scandal drives a wedge through society. Political
elites get swept up in the scandals. Most voters don’t really care.

Literally everypoll about the Russia scandal says that voters don’t approve of Trump and think he tried to obstruct the Russia investigation.

Donald Trump rose peddling the politics of scandal — oblivious to
policy, spreading insane allegations about birth certificates and
other things — so maybe it’s just that he gets swallowed by it.

It’s extremely just. It’s the most just thing that has ever justed.

But frankly, on my list of reasons Trump is unfit for the presidency,
the Russia-collusion story ranks number 971…

#567: He doesn’t know proper cutlery placement!

…well below, for example, the perfectly legal ways he kowtows to thugs
and undermines the norms of democratic behavior.

See, this is why David Brooks is a waste of air. To him, it’s more important that Trump abide by whatever unwritten “norms” of political behavior—the kind of ritualistic do-si-do that allows politicians to quietly dick over their countrymen without kicking up a fuss—than getting to the bottom of whether or not his campaign was responsible for high treason. Only someone safely cosseted in the cocktail party circuit—and used to living an extravagant lifestyle where he assumes people hang on his every word—would think that’s somehow more important.

The people who hype the politics of scandal don’t make American
government purer.

Again, this all operates on the premise that there’s nothing to the Russia allegations, which is insane.

They deserve some of the blame for an administration and government
too distracted to do its job, for a political culture that is both
shallower and nastier, and for fostering a process that looks like an
elite game of entrapment.

Oh yeah, poor Donald Trump. He got set up. And when we set up a deranged autocrat who openly lies, refuses to pay contractors, hustles former customers, strikes down ethics concerns, and advocates crowd violence, we lose a little bit of what makes America AMERICA, you know?

Things are so bad that I’m going to have to give Trump the last word.
On June 15 he tweeted, “They made up a phony collusion with the
Russians story, found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction of
justice on the phony story.” Unless there is some new revelation, that
may turn out to be pretty accurate commentary.

There has been a new revelation pretty much every day when the clock strikes 5 P.M. So maybe this, David Brooks, should be YOUR last word. Maybe the Times should reconsider whether or not their op-ed staff deserves the kind of lifetime appointment usually reserved for Supreme Court justices, especially when they’re so transparently cozy with themselves. Maybe they should get carried away by how awful this is and drop your ass for good. DAVID BROOKS RETIRE BITCH.